Shabbat in Paris

For December 10, 2010
From the Old Olivetti
By Joshua Stein

On the Friday following Thanksgiving I went to church with my wife; but not to pray. St. Denis on the outskirts of Paris was a place I’d longed to see for decades. You remember Dagobert, of course, the last Merovingian king to rule as well as to reign? Among his many accomplishments was construction of the church named after the first Christian martyr of Paris, the aforementioned St. Denis, decapitated on Montmartre (martyrs mount). He picked up his head, the story goes, and walked about six miles preaching along the way. I’m not sure exactly how he accomplished either task but he became one of several Christian cephalophores (from the Greek for “head-carrier” a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head.) From Dagobert’s time on, the basilica was the site of royal burials and tombs to commemorate France’s kings and queens.

In the 12th century the church, in need of repair, was refashioned in the new Gothic style, in fact, St. Denis is the first Gothic building in Europe, all others a modification of the original. So we had to go to church to see the tombs and the architecture. I’d been to Paris many times, but the basilica is so difficult to reach (it’s at the end of a spur line on the Metro) that I never could. This time, however, wife in tow, we schlepped and oohed and ahed.

That evening, it being erev Shabbat we went to synagogue, to the Temple Victoire a.k.a. the Rothschild Synagogue. Built in the Romanesque style in the mid-19th century, this enormous edifice is cathedral like except for the missing statues and crucifixes. Its bimah where the cantor sings facing the congregation is several steps up from the ground, higher still is the area behind where he sings facing the ark which is still higher, and above it there is a pillar atop of which is a depiction of the Ten Commandments. People approached us to talk but our French (mine and my two sons) wasn’t adequate but we quickly ascertained that Hebrew would be the Lingua Franca and we got along in that—my son the cantor did.

Afterwards we walked to the Ailes restaurant at 34 Rue Richer, incongruously across the street from the Folies-Bergère where we had pre-paid for our kosher meal. By the time we got there the place was nearly filled, but our reservations were honored and we sat and quietly sang Shalom Aleichem, and then I blessed my sons and my wife blessed our daughter-in-law and I said kiddish over the wine and the motzi over the bread. Since these sons live at a distance from us I don’t get to bless them very often and I noted as I did that tears were misting my eyes as I said the ancient words knowing that there is a limited number of times one gets to bless his children and wondered how many more chances I’d have. All around us I could hear similar songs and prayers chanted by different families, ricocheting through the restaurant like whispering breezes. But then about a dozen young men came in, took their places, but didn’t sit. Instead in perfect 12 part harmony they sang aloud the blessing over the wine, grabbing the attention of the other diners, some of whom applauded, and others walked over to ask if they were going to bench Birkat Hamazon the tuneful grace after meals. Well, they may have, but by that time we’d quietly sang the words ourselves and left, walking back to our apartment, our stomachs full, our souls refreshed.

It was a nice way to spend Thanksgiving, though whether we’ll ever be able to do it again like that I don’t know, but we did it at least the once.
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A sharp eyed reader called me to task for saying that David Koch, multi-billionaire backer of the Tea Party, was Jewish. I’d used him as an example of one who betrayed the principles of the prophets in expectations of greater profits; it was a brief mention at the end of a long article. Well, here’s a lesson for all of you currently taking Journalism 101. Never rely on memory; always double check your sources and yourself. In my rush to make a deadline, I failed to do either and blundered. Koch is Roman Catholic, not Jewish. My thanks to the sharp-eyed reader.

Adam Smith, Socialist

Quiz time, again:

1- What fruit did Eve eat in the Garden of Eden that got her into trouble?
2- In Genesis, which was created first, women or animals?
3- Why did Cain slay Able?
4-Which of the four books of the Maccabees describes the miracle of the oil lasting eight days?
5- In the Constitution of the United States does the oath taken by a new president conclude with the words “So help me, God”?
6- Does the Constitution of the United States establish a democracy?
7- What did Adam Smith mean when he wrote about Laissez-faire, laissez-passer?

Answers:

1- Who knows? The apple is a renaissance artist’s invention.
2- The woman was created at the same time as the man in Genesis I, after the animals in Genesis II.
3- We are never told.
4- None of them; it’s a later rabbinic add-on.
5- No; the word God is never used in the Constitution, ever.
6- Democracy was the last thing on their minds in 1787; the founders mixed the three classic forms of good government, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy giving democracy the shortest of shrifts.
7- Nothing; he knew the term but never used it and didn’t believe in it.

So much for common knowledge.

Discussion:

If the word God never appears in the seminal document creating the American government why do some Christian fundamentalists want to insist that our schools teach that the founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation? If Adam Smith in his classic On the Wealth of Nations didn’t advocate that the government should do nothing to regulate the economy, what did he propose? And why as a Jewish community should we care? (Hint: Think of the Jewish prophets, not the modern emphasis on profits.)

Prof. John Hill of Curry College recently gave a lecture at Roger Williams University on the topic “Laissez-fair, no fair” debunking the myth that Smith ought to be enshrined as the father of modern capitalism. It was a useful reminder to me of those long ago days when I first read On the Wealth of Nations and a wake-up call to my students who only know it by reputation. Hill contends that Smith was a moral philosopher above all; that he was interested in the wealth of nations, not in the wealth of individuals; that while he understood some would become wealthy, that wealth imposed obligations; that he favored a luxury tax to prevent the wealthy from getting too rich and opposed the sort of gap we have in America where 5% of the population controls 75% of the wealth.
In America, we have always stressed the rugged individual. Smith would have preferred we pay homage to the self-made man who gives it all back. The career of Andrew Carnegie is nothing to emulate; he was a strike breaker who ruthlessly exploited his workers and then let his partner take the fall when deaths occurred. But in his The Gospel of Wealth he preached that ostentatious living and amassing private treasures was wrong. He praised the high British taxes on the estates of dead millionaires. He claimed that, in bettering society and people here on earth, one would be rewarded at the gates of Paradise and gave the vast bulk of his state to the creation of libraries and concert halls.

In a different gospel we read “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” a nice Jewish sentiment paralleling Jeremiah’s idea that the reason Jerusalem was about to fall was that the rich were exploiting the poor. Micah tells us what God expects of us and it’s not acquiring wealth for personal gain at the expense of others but “only to do justice and to love goodness and to walk modestly with your God.” Instead David Koch, Jewish multi-billionaire gives his money under the table to the Tea Party which believes that it’s wrong to tax to aid the tired the poor, the huddled masses who have been seduced into taking out foolish loans. When I was a student protester it was on behalf of the poor, the black, the grunts conscripted into the Vietnam War, none of which I was. Today the Tea Party people protest that their pockets are being picked by people who want to introduce a form of European Socialism. Pshaw! Adam Smith knew the truth, if only people would actually read him.

The 2010 Elections

The people have spoken, though I wish they’d spoken differently.

Two years ago Obama and the Democrats were America’s darlings. On November 2 we saw the power of big money behind the scenes and big voices on TV and radio. We Americans ride a pendulum. In 1964 the conservative movement was dead and in 1980 we got Reagan. In 1972 Nixon was overwhelmingly re-elected and then in ’74 was forced to resign in disgrace. Bill Clinton also lost congress two years into his first term and then handily defeated Bob Dole. The big Republican wins on Tuesday will be followed by big Democratic ones at a polling place near you sometime in the future—but not in two years, I wouldn’t think. Such is life.

A man whose intelligence I respect thinks that the stunning Republican victories were the result of, “the power of the American People, who do not want a ‘European Social Democracy’ type of society.” My immediate response was “You've made my point. The Democrats weren't proposing anything close to European style socialism, but the big money and the big mouths convinced the voters big-time that they were.”

It’s mid-term exam time. Question: Which European leader was the first to introduce and have his parliament pass legislation creating social security benefits, sickness insurance (2/3 of the premiums paid by employers, 1/3 by employees), and accident insurance (100% paid by employers), health insurance, civil marriage obligatory (and church marriages optional). Hint: He was Otto von Bismarck, not some far left socialist (in fact, he had a series of anti-Socialist laws passed). Why? One reason was to woo workers from the Socialist party to his Conservative one; the other was that the master of Realpolitik knew that Germany’s economy depended on a stable happy work force.

President Obama has two choices. He could say (and has already said) I’ve learned my lesson and want to compromise with the new Republican majority in the House, the empowered Republican minority in the Senate. This is the Bill Clinton approach, and it’s worked. Then, but it won’t now. Already, within the week of the elections GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has rejected talk of bipartisanship and made crystal clear his party’s goal is to defeat Obama in 2012. The party of NO will not become the party of “Let’s roll up our sleeves and work together”. Right wing Republicans call Obama “Leviathan” perhaps an homage to Thomas Hobbes as they work to “Reverse the damage done by the Obama-Reid-Pelosi regime since 2008.” (Mark Tapscott, Editorial page editor of the blog “Washington Examiner”)

Memo to Mark Tapscott: Obama didn’t assume office in 2008.

Or Obama could go the other way (but I don’t think he will as he’s shown no inclination to do so when he had large majorities in congress) and roll up his sleeves and say, “I have an agenda, the American people knew what it was when they overwhelmingly elected me and I’m going to push it.” This was the attitude of Cheney and Bush when they rolled into Washington in 2001. They knew the people had wanted Gore and Liebermann, but they’d won and they pushed and pushed and got what they wanted from cowed Democrats and jubilant Republicans. But as I say, I don’t think Obama has it in him. He’s weak; eloquent, but lacking in the reality of how Washington works—not with a whimper but with a whip. Ask Dick Cheney.

The Republican leader in the House is likely to be the only Republican Jew in Congress, Eric Cantor of Virginia. (What does that tell us, that of all the Jews in the House and Senate only one is a Republican? It tells us that Jews are still overwhelmingly concerned with social justice, not bottom lines, with the economics of job creation, not trickle down tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while the gap between poor and rich increases exponentially.) Jews won and lost this season. Rhode Island sent its first Jewish Congressman to the House and America lost Russ Feingold, a man who with John McCain fought and fought and fought and fought for election reform, only to have it trashed by the Supreme Court. It’s ironic that he was among the first victims of the big money splurge that resulted.

For a complete accounting of how Jews did this season, see: http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2010/11/02/2741564/tracking-the-races

My father's bar mitzvah

After my father died, we sold his apartment in the Promised Land (sometimes known as Florida) but before we put it on the market we found treasures including his parents’ naturalization papers which list him as a one year old, but what struck me most was an invitation to his bar mitzvah. “Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Stein Request the honor of your presence at the Confirmation (and then in Hebrew ‘Bar Mitzvah’) of their son Joseph on Saturday April 10th, 1926 at 9 A.M. at Machzike Talmud Torah of Borough Park 1319-43rd Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. Reception at 8 P.M. at their residence 1847-48th Street, Brooklyn, N.Y.”

I wonder if I’m the only reader of the Voice & Herald ever to receive an invitation to their father’s bar mitzvah. The section from the Torah that morning was Sh’mini which among other things describes the deaths of two of Aaron’s sons and his silence in response. The Haftarah was from the book of II Samuel describing the moving of the recaptured Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and the death of one of the men escorting it who made the mistake of touching it when it seemed to fall from its cart. Sixty years later his grandson Daniel, our first born, read the same texts. Life can be odd that way.

I’ve tried to get the weather but people who write columns on typewriters don’t readily have access to such information. But what intrigues me more is that I know the future of those there in a way my grandchildren will know my future and the world as it unfolds beyond our time. I’m just visiting this planet; we all are. Some of us try to make it a better place in our limited allotted time; others simply reside as a tenant in someone else’s apartment, making no improvements, others exploit all advantages intended or not. I do not pass judgment as I am as often willing to laugh at the world’s absurdities from the sidelines as I am to roll up my sleeves to resolve them.

But I know that in 1926 Hitler was merely an ex-con heading up an obscure political party considered too radical to succeed; that the Great Depression was still three years into the future; Stalin would have his show trials in 1936; Pearl Harbor was fifteen years away; my parents married eleven months later and I came along seventeen months after that. None of this was known on that bright sunny day (as I picture it in my mind) when my father read from the Torah and haftarah way back then, eighty-four years ago.

What’s in store for us? One of the things I’ve learned as an historian is that attempting to predict the future is a fool’s game. The old cliché about history repeating itself is a canard, not a truth. Economists and political scientists try to anticipate events and trends all the time, and fail. They study their charts and computer print outs and fail to account for this little thing or that and so they are wrong as often as right. If it were otherwise we’d all be millionaires. After all, who in 1926 was predicting the Great Depression or could have foretold that in seven years Hitler would be Chancellor of Germany?

In Berlin there’s currently a showing of Hitler mementos which opened with some trepidation. This is the first time a German museum has had such an exhibit, and the curators say they have taken great care to avoid glorifying the villain who is their subject. The Central Council of Jews in Germany acknowledges that the timing is right, given today’s political climate where Germans are nervous about the economy and immigrants and some in the lower middle class seem to want a leader to extract them form the doldrums—paralleling some of the conditions of 1933. Exhibits are set up in ways to discourage neo-Nazis from taking heroic photos of themselves near images of Hitler. But Hitler though dead is still a living presence, alive to those who fear foreigners, non-Christians, the better educated. In America their ilk is confined, generally, to the wilds of Idaho and Montana (except when they emerge as a Timothy McVey in Oklahoma City).

None of this was known when my father, a young boy of thirteen innocently celebrated becoming a man in 1926, to which event I’ve just been invited.

A Newspaper's dilemma

There’s a current aphorism. “No good deed goes unpunished.” Case in point, the New Jersey Jewish Standard of Teaneck. Like this paper it has a page to announce bar and bat mitzvahs, births, engagements and weddings. But when the paper printed the announcement of a gay engagement, the consequences set an intercollegiate record for the number of times the word “disgusting” could be used in a single news cycle.

You’re familiar with the incident? If not, here are the pertinent details. In its September 24 issue the paper informed that two gay Jewish men were to marry. This disgusted local Orthodox Jews (and in Teaneck this is a formidable group to antagonize) which complained that community standards had been violated. Embarrassed, the paper issued an apology the next issue and said it would never do so again. The pro-marriage equality community was disgusted by this turn about and demanded that in future the paper publish gay wedding announcements. But that reversal sparked even more furor, prompting the newspaper this week to change course again, this time expressing regret for its hasty apology of the previous week. As of now, it's not clear what the newspaper's policy will be. To adjust a familiar quotation (by Sir Walter Scott) “Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to please”

We have four parties at play here. First there is Avi Smolen and Justin Rosen who wish to marry and though Orthodox have found a local Conservative rabbi to perform the ceremony. (A quick Ask.com search suggests that New Jersey does not recognize gay marriage so the whole question may be mute other than symbolically anyway.) Then there’s the Standard which thought it was doing a mitzvah by accepting the notice (and then by apologizing and then by re-apologizing). The Orthodox community is trying to protect what it considers the sanctity of marriage in Jewish law and custom while marriage equality people believe that the newspaper should reflect current sensibilities, or at least their sensibilities. In none of the above is there error, which makes the problem that much more difficult to resolve.

(Years ago, the editorial board of this newspaper discussed what we should do if we were sent notice of a gay engagement or wedding. The debate was heated but polite. I was of the “we should think twice before offending accepted morality mode back then, before I had a column, and in the end we took a rare vote and narrowly decided to accept what we were sent. Since then, we’ve received no such announcements, though my guess is that from now on we will. As I remember it the word “disgusting” was never used, either by the pro or anti sides, but we were younger then.) Back to our story:

Question: Should gay people be allowed to marry? (This is a question for the states to resolve, not me. It pits thousands of years of tradition against current standards of individual choice. If it were up to me government would get out of the marriage license business and let the chips fall where they may, but it’s not up to me.)

Question: If a gay couple wants to marry, should Jewish clergy perform the service? (This is a relatively easy one, and the New Jersey young men found the correct solution. Since what they were doing would be offensive [disgusting] to their rabbi, they found a rabbi who would do it.)

Question: Should rabbinical organizations permit or prohibit their members from performing gay marriages? (Well, the Orthodox say “no” in an unequivocal voice while the Conservative and Reform leave it up to the rabbis and/or their congregations to decide for themselves. This passes the buck. I think the Orthodox are correct in taking a stand unlike the Conservative and Reform organizations which seem to fear to.)

Question: Should Jewish newspapers publish notices of Jewish engagements/weddings? (Community standards have changed since I was worried about offending them. Since getting this column I have offended Orthodox standards on a few occasions, but I’m a columnist expressing an opinion, not the paper of record of the Jewish community of Rhode Island. If we could avoid offending the Orthodox, we should, but we should not exclude those who believe in marriage equality whether they are gay or straight. Does this mean not publishing any engagement/marriage announcements? I hope not.)

Messrs. Smolen and Rosen are scheduled to be married on October 17. It’s not an accepting world they are entering. I wish them luck.

Lea's Torah

The room which moments earlier had been filled with the sounds of adults talking and children running and laughing was suddenly hushed, profoundly quiet except for the scratching of a quill. The last two lines of the book of Deuteronomy were being inscribed onto a parchment section which would soon be sewn to its predecessors in the completion of a Torah scroll. As the scribe Jamie Shear dipped his quill into ink and then wrote, reciting each word before he did so, we his audience at Temple Emanu-El watched silently the fulfillment of an ancient command to write the words of the covenant for every generation. When he was finished the children and the adults started to dance and to sing, but there was more task to be done before the secular could be called holy, before the skin of an animal and wood and ink transcended the level of commonplace to become the sacred.

Our new Torah at Temple Emanu-El had been paid for by subscription. We’d recently lost a favorite teacher, Lea Eliash. Someone, I don’t know who, proposed that a fitting tribute to a woman who had devoted her life in America to teaching Hebrew to young children and mature adults after surviving the terrors of the Holocaust in Europe, would be to honor her memory with a new Torah scroll, and so was launched the “Lea’s Letters” campaign. And now the last of those letters, the word Yisrael, was being inscribed as permanently as anything in this world can be, to be read by bar and bat mitzvah candidates and their parents and grandparents, and by their children and grandchildren for as along as there is a Temple Emanu-El, and beyond, I imagine. Its rollers and handles (called in Hebrew Atzei Chaim, in English “Trees of Life”) were carved by her grandson out of wood from her dining room table, a place I’ve sat at and enjoyed meals and conviviality as have many in the community. Now it is reduced in size but increased in stature. Lea is gone, we all knew that, but this piece of her home will provide ample reminder of her presence and importance to the community for as long as we remembered where they were from. The collective gasp as this was revealed was almost the sound of a breeze through the tall grasses. In time, I suppose there will be fewer and fewer people who will recall that the wood of the trees of life were from the dining room table of a loving and gentle woman who once lived here, but for a while, at least, we who were there will remember, and when we do, her sweetness and grace will be called to mind.

In my mind scribes are old men in black suits, pot bellies, blackened fingers and shtreimels, or at least black fedoras. Shear does not fit the mold. Rail thin and smiling shyly he covers his head with a knitted kippah and while he has a beard, it’s a stylish goatee (I recently had one like that until my wife pointed out that enough was enough). Born and raised in Montreal, he attended High School and Bar Ilan University in Israel, moving there permanently four years ago. Emanu-El’s is his sixth torah scroll. It has the standard 245 columns, each checked by the scribe and then by two rabbis and then by a computer which scans it and spots errors, if any. At Emanu-El, just as he was about to sew the final stage onto the rollers, he noticed that an aleph, one of the letters he’d just written, was just slightly off. He described an aleph as a vov with two yuds, one above and one below. The upper yud was more of a blob than he felt appropriate and with the audience surrounding him he scraped off the offending digit and replaced it with a better one. Now he was finished and when the last stitch connecting parchment to roller was completed we broke out into a she’hecheyanu prayer—Blessed are you, Lord, who has granted us life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this occasion. Nothing else seemed as appropriate.

Lea Eliash now has a suitable memorial; Jamie Shear now has completed another Torah—but he has another almost done which he’ll deliver to a congregation in Hong Kong next month. And we of Temple Emanu-El have a new torah, light enough to be lifted by thirteen year olds and solid enough to contain the words of our people as they have been laboriously penned by other scribes, again, and again, and again.

Save us from ourselves!

Rosh Hashanah is over, though lingering in my mind are its tunes (as well as my envy of those who can stand without resorting to their hands pulling on the pew in front or pushing down on the chair below. That ability is but a memory in my case.)

On Yom Kippur we are enjoined to ask forgiveness of those we might have offended. As a columnist, I have a greater opportunity to offend than most. I can’t tell you how many times people have stopped me to tell me that they enjoy my columns but that they disagree with this that or the other thing. Given the opportunity to talk, we do; if the opportunity isn’t there, I thank them and go on with whatever it was that I was doing. So, if there are those of you out there who by my columns I have offended, please don’t take them personally. The only difference between us is that I’ve been given this forum. You have the ability to write to me (many do) or to write directly to the newspaper which will print your letter if you ask. Dialogue is thus achieved with the opportunity of finding common ground. This is not exactly asking for forgiveness, but, hey, I’m imperfect and this is as close to asking for it as I can get this year. Maybe I’ll do better next year, given the opportunity.

OK, by a show of hands, how many of you think it is a really, really, really stupid thing for Muslims to want to build a mosque within debris range of Ground Zero? Whew, lots of hands. And how many of you think it’s OK to build the Park51 Muslim Community Center anywhere local planning authorities give permission? Just about the same number. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf , a Sufi Muslim, wants to build a 13 story Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from the World Trade Center. The facility would include a 500 seat auditorium, a theater, a performing arts center, a fitness center, a swimming pool, a basketball court and a child care area, a bookstore, a culinary school, an art studio, food courts, a September 11 memorial and, oh, by the way, a prayer space capable of accommodating between one and two thousand people. It’s this latter feature so close to Ground Zero that has raised the hackles of conservative opponents. (When Newt Gingrich argues that there shouldn’t be a Ground Zero mosque until a synagogue or church is built in Mecca he makes a very bad point. For all our faults, America is not, thank God, Saudi Arabia, and Mecca is a holy city while New York is as secular as it gets.)

Question: Do Muslims have a right to build a community center anywhere the law allows? The answer is yes. Does having the right to do something make it appropriate? Well, here we’re on shakier ground. The Taliban had the power, to destroy the Bamyan Buddhas in March, 2001, and so it did. The world is worse off for not having them any longer. Proponents of (a radical form of) Islam destroyed somebody else’s sacred object—as the Rev. Terry Jones was willing to destroy Korans. Why are we more upset with the one than the other? Perhaps because of the sacredness of the printed word, perhaps because Muslims take these things more seriously than Buddhists.

At Auschwitz, sacred (surely that’s not the right word, but what is?) to Jews, Carmelite nuns built a cross on land they owned, and Jews were outraged and eventually it was removed. (Is it a fair generalization to say that when Jews, who are few in number, are outraged they work the system, while when Muslims in the majority are—think here the Danish cartoons and the threatened Koran burning—they go berserk? Just asking.)

Another example of doing what you can but not thinking of the consequences (or caring about them) is when Ariel Sharon took it upon himself to walk on the Temple Mount. He was entitled to. There was no law to prevent an Israeli MK from walking anywhere in Jerusalem, but the fact that Sharon thought to bring a squad of bodyguards with him suggests that he knew he was stirring the pot. Is this the same thing as the Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero? In a way, it is. People with rights will want to exercise them regardless of consequence. And when the violence results they will point to the other guys and say, “Look, we didn’t cause the ruckus, they did.”

Avinu Malkenu, save us from ourselves.